Free-choice and reduplication A study in Breton dependant indefinites
Langue
en
Chapitre d'ouvrage
Ce document a été publié dans
Representations and Interpretations in Celtic Studies. 2015
Résumé en anglais
Indefinites are felicitous with a reading where, internally to a contextually relevant set, the particular choice of referent is irrelevant. When a magician says ''Pick a card'', context favors an interpretation where any ...Lire la suite >
Indefinites are felicitous with a reading where, internally to a contextually relevant set, the particular choice of referent is irrelevant. When a magician says ''Pick a card'', context favors an interpretation where any card from the set would be a felicitous choice, as long as it is a card from the proposed set, as illustrated for modern Breton (Continental Celtic) in (1)a. Some indefinite constructions have this free-choice reading as the only felicitous one. This paper closely investigates such a [[free choice indefinite]] (FCI) that presents a typologically unusual morphology as illustrated in (1)b. This free-choice indefinite is realized by [[reduplication]] of the head noun around what seems like a spatial proximate deictic morpheme (''-mañ-''). The relevant contrast with the regular indefinite ''ur gartenn'' in (1)a is loss of optionality for the free-choice reading. The sentence in (1)a is felicitous if the magician proposes only one card, whereas (1)b is not. (1)DURING A SHOW, THE MAGICIAN SAYS: a. ''Trapit ur gartenn''. Pick a card 'Pick a card.’ b. ''Trapit kartenn-mañ-kartenn''. pick card-here-card 'Pick a card, any card.’Breton In this paper, I will first investigate the DP-internal syntax and morphology of the reduplication construction in (1)b. I will propose that it results from the creation of a complex head noun by reduplication in a morphological step operated between syntax and phonological form. Next, I investigate the distribution of the Breton reduplicated FCI. I show that when preceded by a specificity marker, this construction behaves like a regular indefinite. When not preceded by this specificity marker, the noun exhibits the typical distributional restrictions of dependent indefinites. I will show that the bare use has existential quantificational force, but can acquire universal force when bound by a universal quantifier.< Réduire
Mots clés
réduplication
indéfinis
Linguistique bretonne
quantification
linguistique celtique
Mots clés en anglais
Free choice items
syntax
Breton grammar
Breton linguistics
Celtic linguistics
indefinites
Reduplication
Origine
Importé de halUnités de recherche